Under the pressure of this competitive fury we have not only forgotten what is useful to humanity as a whole, but even that which is good and advantageous to the individual. Konrad Lorenz, Civilized Man's Eight Deadly Sins, 1973.

Prompt and brief/ We carry up our wounded one by one./ The first cock crows; the morrow has begun. Laurence Binyon, "Fetching the Wounded."

November 11 is Armistice Day, the eleventh day of the eleventh month whereon at the eleventh hour the “Great War” ended. And on Armistice Day we remember Laurence Binyon, born in a double-fronted house on High Street, Lancaster, England. Binyon, after a double First at Cambridge, spent most of his life at the British Museum, where he became director of the division of prints and drawings. He did creditably there (wrote much about the collection and organized memorable special exhibits from it), but he became better known as a playwright, poet, and theorist of a non-theistic spiritualism. Withal, he was “the best loved man in London” (Ezra Pound, 1909) and a “wise, poor, and incorruptible lover of truth and beauty . . . who knew how to be both warm and detached” (Cyril Connolly, in a 1943 obituary). Among other things, he worked for a revival of poetic drama, accompanied (as in Shakespeare’s time, by music) and it was none other than Edward Elgar who set the music for one of his plays (Arthur, staged at the Old Vic in 1923). His wide circle of friends was made wider still by visiting professorships at Tokyo, Athens, and Harvard. His birthing day was not, however, November 11, but August 10, 1869. It is good to remember Laurence Binyon for his war poetry, suffused as it was by its vivid senses of loss and grief and pain, and not only on the battlefield, nor only in the field hospitals (where Binyon served, 1915-1918), but “in the still presence of far homes/ Lost in deep country, and in little rooms/ The vacant bed.” (“Fetching the Wounded”). And Binyon’s “For the Fallen” is today being recited, yet again:

I'd Do It Again. Title of James Curley's autobiography, published in 1957. The title's reference is to the closing scene in Edwin O'Connor's very fine 1956 novel, The Last Hurrah, based loosely on Curley's life.

We live and learn (again!). I never heard of this chap, but I know nearly everyone else who is mentioned in a google search for him. Can't understand how I missed him. I know of Cecil Sharpe, Mr Bowdler, and even Mr Pecksniff.

A friend from WAY back (Wisconsin and Oxford!!) sent an enlightening and rather charming note on Cecil Sharp, and I feel I should share it. Dick Lewis, the writer, is himself a distinguished folk singer (and a scholar of old and middle English). I believe I last heard Dick sing at The Trout, in the Spring of 1970. Not the famous Trout by Godstow meadow, just on Oxford, but the “other” Trout a few miles up the Thames. His performance was well received by a jolly crowd at quite a jolly (and rather beautiful) pub, all those years ago. I dare say that he might have sung one or two songs recovered or recorded by Cecil Sharp—but I am not a folk singer and I wouldn’t have known then, nor now.
Dick’s note contains a small correction, which was that Sharp was transfixed and transformed by those Morris dancers in 1899, not 1902. I got my information from the Dictionary of National Biography but Dick’s should be taken as read. And the earlier date is better, for it gave Sharp 25 years, rather than just 22, to remake, or recreate, the map of English (and some American) folk music.
While I am at it, please accept my best wishes for a Happy Thanksgiving. And if you don’t celebrate it, Happy Thanksgiving, anyway. When Paulette and I come to it, we will do a good Boxing Day, even though we no longer celebrate it . . . .
Thanks, Dick!!! Bob

Stanley Challenger Graham
Stanley's View
scg1936 at talktalk.net

"Beware of certitude" (Jimmy Reid)
The floggings will continue until morale improves!